Archive: Manchester Couple Ride Their 1,000th Roller Coaster Together

Some think marriage can be a roller coaster ride -- either scary and stomach-churning, or a shared joy with high, low and upside-down stretches. For Don Tuttle and Carol Deeble, the thrill goes on. The Manchester couple, both in their mid-70s, had ridden 999 separate roller coasters when they arrived Wednesday at Six Flags New England in Agawam, Mass. Their 1,000th coaster was the new Goliath, which hosted VIP riders Wednesday and debuts to the public this Memorial Day weekend. "We're adrenaline junkies," said Don, who turns 77 Wednesday. "We skydive. We ride ziplines. We whitewater raft... Pretty much anything that's crazy, we'll try it." The Buffalo, N.Y., natives grew up together and dated in high school (Kenmore High School, Class of '53). As teenage sweethearts, they rode the Comet coaster at an Ontario amusement park, then went on to separate lives, he as a mechanical engineer for Pratt & Whitney in Connecticut; she as an office manager in South Carolina. Reunited after Carol's first husband died and Don had been divorced, they married in 2001 at what is now the Great Escape theme park in Lake George, N.Y., and rode the revived and relocated Comet once again to seal the deal. Tuttle said he and Deeble, 76, have ridden coasters at 288 amusement parks in 28 countries. Tuttle says he's only been scared once on a coaster -- at an amusement park in China. The seat belt in the car was not working, Tuttle said, so the attendant strapped him in with a rope. With an engineer's knowledge of the forces that keep a rider planted in the seat, Tuttle took a chance and rode through to the end. But he said there was one point on the looping ride where the speed was a bit slow and the angle of the cars a bit precarious for a 250-pound man secured only with a clothesline. In any case, Tuttle and Deeble say they don't plan to stop riding roller coasters any time soon. "We're a couple of crazy people," Tuttle said.